Assessment of Body Reserves in Camels

Abstract

Herbivores manage their body reserves in a way that helps them respond to variations in the quality and accessibility of feed resources. Assessing these reserves provides farmers with a decision-making tool. Almost no data are available on these aspects of the camel. The present article summarizes several works on weight estimations that are used to assess the volume and weight of the hump (main location of fat reserves), relationships between hump measurements and carcass weight, and between hump weight and perirenal fat weight. Assessing the number and size of adipocytes is a means to test the relevance of these types of fat storage. There is in particular a positive relationship between the size and number of adipocytes in the hump and those in the perirenal fat. The age and sex effects were very pronounced for some of the criteria. A body condition score was established for this species based on the assessment of selected body parts. Results however showed that the hump was not a good bodycondition indicator because of variations in its weight as well as in the size of its adipocytes.